Chapter 43

The old man walked over and looked at Qiao Huan:

"Did you endorse an apple?"

Qiao Huan: ?

His face hadn't even appeared in that endorsement. How had the old man recognized him?

The old man pulled out a piece of cardboard. "That big-headed apple person on here is you, right?"

The two men looked at the cardboard.

Qiao Huan vaguely remembered that the Healthy Body Apple Factory was nearby. The manager who had received him that day had never expected him to agree to endorse their product, so the entire shoot had been marked by a certain homespun roughness.

His endorsement had been simple, too. He'd folded his arms across his chest for a photo that looked like a real estate agent's WeChat profile picture, and that was it.

The manager had really liked it, but considering that the factory had no money, he'd been too embarrassed to have Qiao Huan show his face. Qiao Huan himself had suggested they photograph their best-looking apple and paste it right over his face.

And even then... the old man had recognized him.

The old man laughed. "You! A hundred precautions, and you still missed one thing! Look at your build—it's so recognizable! When you ran off after delivering the boxed meals that day, we knew it was you at a glance!"

Qiao Huan's face darkened. "You really are observant."

Zhuo Yang couldn't hold back a snort of laughter.

Then the old man looked at Zhuo Yang.

"Are you this celebrity's sidekick? No... you're a celebrity too, aren't you? I think I saw you endorse a pear?"

As he spoke, the old man pulled out another piece of cardboard. "I use this as a fan. This big-headed pear person is tall and burly. Could it be you?"

Zhuo Yang looked at his own "real estate agent-style endorsement photo," just like the Healthy Body Apple Factory's, and was speechless for a moment.

The same kind of fruit factory, the same taste.

Zhuo "the big pear who doesn't even deliver boxed meals" Yang: He couldn't laugh anymore.

Xiao Feng had come over at some point and squeezed his head between the shoulders of the two men, whose average height was nearly 1.9 meters.

"You two have really taken your endorsements downmarket, huh?"

The old man thought "downmarket" was something bad and immediately bristled. "Down where? They're on the up and up! Everyone around here who buys apples and pears likes these two young men! They all think eating this fruit will give them builds like theirs!"

Xiao Feng: ...Oh.

"Downmarket" was industry jargon for being popular in smaller cities and rural areas, the exact opposite of the usual boy band fan base.

Qiao Huan and Zhuo Yang both froze for a moment. They hadn't expected their endorsements to escape the internet only to be caught by the word of mouth of the local uncles and aunties.

Looking at the two photos now, they really were oddly mesmerizing. If anything was to blame, it was how seriously they'd taken their former public-service training. They couldn't even strike a pose for an endorsement, standing there with their backs ramrod straight.

No wonder the working masses loved them.

Only after praising the two young men did the old man have time to look at the little boy. He froze at once.

"Isn't this... the Fan family's boy?"

Zhuo Yang nodded. "Yes. We're his temporary guardians. We've come to catch crayfish with you."

The old man's beaming smile instantly stiffened. "Can this child do it?"

"Why can't he?"

Qiao Huan and Zhuo Yang hadn't expected the female referee to speak up before they could.

The old man looked at her and froze again. "A Fang..."

"Hello, Uncle," A Fang said expressionlessly. "Long time no see."

The old man looked awkward. "Yes."

The two hadn't even exchanged basic pleasantries, yet they knew each other's names. It was extremely awkward.

Fortunately, Xiao Feng saw that preparations at the site were nearly finished and prompted them. "Shall we start the livestream, then?"

Everyone there breathed a sigh of relief and quickly agreed. "All right."

Unexpectedly, as soon as they started filming, the male hooligan came over with his cameraman and the chubby boy.

"Well, well, look at them. Celebrities, all right. They even put on sunscreen to go into a field. So precious!"

Since the hooligan and Xiao Feng were livestreaming the same scene, the website quickly put their feeds together in a split screen.

As a result, the viewers who came in included not only fans of the show but also some of the hooligan's "fans." One side was there for the boy band, while the other liked rural livestreams. Normally, they were as far apart as the ends of the earth.

For a while, the atmosphere in the livestream was a little... bizarre.

"I knew celebrities working in the fields was all for show. So Xiu Si is like that too!"

"Have you ever seen a farmer put on sunscreen? What a turnoff!"

"Brother Lai Lai is a genuine farmer. Look at his physique—that's what you get from working in the fields!"

"But isn't it normal for celebrities to wear sunscreen?"

"My parents are both farmers, and they use sun protection too..."

As Zhuo Yang rubbed sunscreen on his face, he held back his temper and explained, "Long exposure to the sun can cause peeling and redness at best, and sunburn at worst. It also makes you much more likely to get skin cancer. You should use sunscreen too."

Besides, he'd used this sunscreen regularly in the military. Everyone had used it, and it was really reliable.

Qiao Huan had finished applying sunscreen to Constantine. He turned to the chubby boy. "You've never worked in a field before, have you? Want some?"

It was best not to drag children into the adults' grievances.

But the boy didn't appreciate it at all. He stepped forward and knocked the sunscreen straight out of Qiao Huan's hand. "I listen to my dad! I don't need that sissy stuff!"

Qiao Huan: ...

Parents really did have a huge influence on their children. He'd become a diode at such a young age—no small feat.

So Qiao Huan and Zhuo Yang took Constantine away from the hooligan's team, intending to concentrate on the game.

But the three of them seemed determined to crowd around them, and they couldn't shake them off.

"All right, everyone, we have ten teams in total. No more sign-ups or withdrawals, right?" the female referee called. "The rules are simple. Within one hour, you get ten points for every three crayfish you catch, and lose five points for every rice seedling you trample. Understood?"

"Understood!"

Qiao Huan and Zhuo Yang looked at the rice paddies in front of them.

The experimental field for raising crayfish was right in the middle of several rice paddies, but the channels the old men had dug yesterday were too shallow. The juvenile crayfish had escaped into the surrounding fields, so they had to catch them and put them back.

Catching crayfish wasn't particularly difficult. The trouble was that the weather was hot, and even after changing into rain boots, they couldn't move easily in the paddy.

Beep—

The competition began!

Zhuo Yang and Qiao Huan exchanged a look and immediately ran to the very center of the paddies.

Not only could they avoid the cameras here, but they could also shake off the hooligan's team.

The barrage, however, was baffled:

"They ran over there where there isn't even a patch of shade. They really have never done farm work!"

"I'm dying. The celebrities sure run fast, but their brains don't work."

"Look at our Brother Lai Lai. He's so smart, starting at the edge with the kid."

The hooligan also took the opportunity to show off, giving his son a couple of kicks in the backside:

"Hurry, hurry, hurry up and catch them! We've got to beat that bunch!"

Panting and puffing, the chubby boy bent down and muttered, "Why aren't you catching any..."

"I'm your father!"

Not far away.

The center of the paddy was not only hotter, but there were also fewer juvenile crayfish.

But for the three of them, it was just right.

Qiao Huan and Zhuo Yang cared more about how Constantine was doing than their score.

Away from the crowd, Constantine visibly relaxed.

Qiao Huan turned his back, using his body to block the sun and the camera, and asked Constantine, "Shall we catch the crayfish and put them in the bucket?"

Constantine nodded.

Then he spotted a juvenile crayfish, but as soon as he crouched down and reached out, he cried, "Ah!" and pulled his hand back.

Qiao Huan smiled. "What's wrong?"

"It's so slippery." Constantine rubbed his fingers. "It feels a little scary."

It was a normal reaction for a child who had never been in a field. After all, juvenile crayfish really did look rather like big bugs.

Qiao Huan and Zhuo Yang both thought of the endurance training they'd done during special training, when they'd gone into a room full of bugs...

Although the young men had all pretended to be perfectly calm on the surface, they hadn't felt good inside either.

"Open your hand," Zhuo Yang said.

Constantine obediently did as he was told.

Then Zhuo Yang picked up a crayfish and placed it in Constantine's palm.

Constantine instinctively tried to pull away, but Zhuo Yang and Qiao Huan both took hold of his hand at the same time.

As soon as they did, they both paused.

That was how their instructor had helped team members with excessive fear responses "desensitize" themselves.

"Ah..." With the two uncles' help, Constantine felt the crayfish's body. Suddenly, he smiled. "Interesting."

The two men looked away from each other.

Hmm, something wasn't quite right.

Fortunately, the trick worked extremely well. In just a few dozen seconds, Constantine was no longer afraid.

"You need to look under those leaves too. The crayfish are afraid of the sun as well," Qiao Huan instructed Constantine, changing the subject. "The young crayfish are close to the same color as the leaves, so look carefully."

"Okay!"

After that, Constantine thoroughly enjoyed the game.

He kept crouching down and standing up, searching for targets in the rice paddy.

Qiao Huan and Zhuo Yang didn't interfere much, focusing instead on shielding Constantine from the sun and outsiders' eyes.

"There's another one on the left."

"In the water, thirty centimeters down."

"Twelve o'clock..."

The two men felt it was a little inhumane to just watch, and gradually got hooked on directing him, helping Constantine catch the ones he missed. They worked together rather well.

Overall, though, Zhuo Yang did more of the talking. As time went on, Qiao Huan spoke less and less.

The hooligan's trio was not far away. Although Qiao Huan and Zhuo Yang had no intention of inviting comparisons, the viewers in the barrage naturally noticed the difference.

"Emmm, both sets of parents are directing a kid to work, so why does it feel so different?"

"It's respect, isn't it? The Slow Yangyang duo really respect the child. They don't just block the sun for him, they're also especially patient!"

"Slow Yangyang?"

"Qiao Huan and Zhuo Yang's duo!"

"Yes, and their directions are really precise. Unlike Brother Lai Lai, who calls it directing but is actually rushing his son and telling him to hurry, even threatening him!"

"I'm numb. I'm a Lai Lai fan, and I thought he could do farm work, but he's doing worse than Constantine. Does he actually know how?"

"I'm a villager, let me tell you! Lai Lai really can't do farm work. All he does is make himself look ugly on livestreams to grab attention. Stop being his fans!"

Although the barrage was full of praise, Qiao Huan and Zhuo Yang gradually noticed something odd as they directed Constantine.

Weren't each other's powers of observation and reaction speeds a little too outstanding?

Since Zhuo Yang had attended the Martial Arts School, if Qiao Huan's surprise at him was a seventy, then Zhuo Yang's surprise at Qiao Huan was a ninety.

Even though Qiao Huan had barely been speaking lately, Zhuo Yang was still wondering to himself whether Qiao Huan had also trained his dynamic visual acuity.

Or was he simply gifted...

"You three." The female referee came over with the referee team and was quite surprised to see such a harmonious scene. "You... communicate very well!"

"...Yes." They hadn't expected to communicate so well either.

The assistant beside the female referee crouched down and said gently to Constantine, "Sweetheart, you can try grabbing the crayfish around the waist, just like grabbing a stuffed toy. Isn't it quickest to grab the thin part?"

Her words were gentle and considerate. Clearly, she had spent a long time caring for children.

But Constantine looked up at the woman blankly.

It was as if he hadn't understood.

The assistant froze. "Why did you stop, sweetheart? Are you tired?"

Constantine shook his head. "I'm not tired."

"Then why aren't you catching any more?"

"I want to keep catching them."

That brief exchange swept away the harmonious atmosphere from just moments ago.

The female assistant was utterly puzzled. "Did I... say something wrong?"

Qiao Huan and Zhuo Yang were puzzled too.

Constantine had clearly been catching crayfish efficiently just now.

"That's how Constantine is, just like my daughter used to be." The female referee's gaze softened. "Sometimes he understands, and sometimes he doesn't... That's why everyone in the village said they were possessed."

"They?" Qiao Huan keenly caught the key point. "Does your daughter know Constantine?"

"Yes." The female referee looked at Constantine. "When he was younger, I was Sister Fan's live-in nanny. It was then that... we discovered our children weren't quite normal."

While the female referee was speaking, Qiao Huan quickly made a "cut" gesture to Xiao Feng and moved to block the camera.

Having spent so long together, Xiao Feng quickly understood and moved farther away, protecting the referee's and Constantine's privacy.

Only then did Qiao Huan ask, "What exactly were the signs?"

In truth, he didn't think there was a problem communicating with Constantine. Constantine's biggest problems were his earlier tendency toward self-destruction and his sudden breakdown at the dinner party.

"Constantine has always been very smart," the female referee recalled in a lowered voice. "Sometimes he seemed too smart, so he was very particular about his routine. He ate and slept at fixed times every day and didn't want them disrupted. Whenever I tried to communicate with him, I was always... crushed, or he wouldn't understand, like just now. Sister Fan and I both wondered whether he was pretending not to understand."

After listening, Qiao Huan asked Constantine directly, "Did you really not understand what that lady just said, or were you pretending? You mustn't lie."

Constantine hurriedly waved his hands. "I don't lie! I really... didn't understand."

How would he dare lie in front of these two big brothers?

Qiao Huan looked at the female referee. "I believe he isn't lying. Haven't you ever asked him directly like that?"

The female referee was taken aback. "Who would ask a child something like that...?"

"His IQ is 140. Of course you can ask him as you would a normal adult!" Zhuo Yang cut in. "But why does he sometimes suddenly fail to understand your instructions..."

"I have a guess, friends," the psychologist, who had been silent until now, suddenly spoke up. "Have you perhaps heard of Asperger syndrome?"

All three looked at the psychologist.

"Children like this have high IQs and things they're good at, but they don't fit in and don't like communicating with others," the psychologist added. "Most notably, they can respond to simple, effective instructions, but not to figures of speech and the like."

"Oh..."

Qiao Huan and Zhuo Yang understood at once.

The reason they had always felt they had no trouble communicating with Constantine was that they had kept the communication habits they'd had on the job, always using simple language when they talked.

"Of course, it's only a guess. We'll need to run some tests to know for sure," the psychologist said with a smile. "But it's definitely not so-called 'possession'! In many remote areas, never mind child psychologists—even psychologists for adults are actually few and far between. But people have just as many psychological problems as those in the cities, so we really do need to understand one another better."

"Yes," the female assistant agreed. "The economic base determines the superstructure. In a place like ours, even agriculture isn't well developed, let alone attention to people's psychological problems. Otherwise, there wouldn't be so much talk about people being crazy or possessed..."

But this did not completely dispel Qiao Huan's doubts. Constantine had sought attention through self-destructive behavior, but what had caused his outburst at the banquet?

The female judge should have known, but she was somewhat dazed at the moment, as though she had fallen into some memory she was unwilling to bring up...

Qiao Huan wanted to ask more, but couldn't find a suitable opportunity to speak.

Meanwhile, the female assistant and the psychologist were still discussing the village's development problems, when one of the major causes sidled over.

"So you're rigging things right here!" The rogue leaned closer. "Folks, look at them. They've been chatting with the judge this whole time. Sure is good being an entertainer—you can barely catch any crayfish and still cozy up to the officials!"

The bullet comments had indeed been muted for quite a while.

"Is it really rigged?"

"They really haven't moved in ages!"

"I don't get it, what are they doing?"

"But Brother Rogue hasn't caught much either. I've been watching Qiao Huan's group and the kid working hard to catch them the whole time. Isn't the rogue just playing dirty?"

"There are too many rogues like this in villages. There used to be a folk-culture master in our village, and a bunch of people would gather around him every day to take pictures and livestream and stuff. They stopped working in the fields too..."

"Let me see how many you've caught! It's definitely hardly any!"

The chubby kid had apparently received instructions from his father. Seeing that the adults were distracted, he marched up and grabbed for Constantine's little bucket.

Sheltered behind Zhuo Yang, Constantine naturally refused to have the fruits of his labor snatched away and pulled back with all his might.

But he wasn't as sturdy as the diode-brained chubby kid, and after a brief struggle, the other boy pushed him aside.

When the bullet comments saw how many crayfish were in the bucket, they instantly switched sides.

"How were they rigging things with the judge? Even after chatting for so long, they've clearly caught several times as many as the rogue!"

"I'm dying. And this rogue says he knows farm work? Could you stop playing dirty?"

"So Brother Rogue is the kind of person who goes around stirring up trouble and pulling scams for attention, right?"

Seeing this, the rogue man frantically signaled to his son and had his own cameraman point the camera elsewhere.

The chubby kid immediately charged at Constantine. "I took the wrong one. That bucket you had just now was mine!"

Zhuo Yang finally couldn't stand watching anymore. He lunged forward and blocked the chubby kid with one of his long legs.

But that was exactly what the rogue man wanted. He immediately hugged Zhuo Yang's leg. "He's hitting someone! A big guy like him is hitting a child!"

The chubby kid fell down too, wailing and crying out in pain.

For a moment, father and son were crying and scratching, almost biting Zhuo Yang's leg. They truly took their rogue tactics to the extreme.

They were far too experienced at this sort of thing, and neither camera was pointed at them. The stage had been perfectly set.

With the two of them clinging to him, Zhuo Yang clenched his fists. Unable to contain the anger he had bottled up for so long, he raised his arm high, about to swing at the rogue's face.

The rogue seemed to see his medical payout coming and even thrust half his face toward him.

But someone caught Zhuo Yang's hand in midair.

It was Qiao Huan.

Qiao Huan had actually just given the back of Zhuo Yang's hand a light pat.

But the little gesture, which only the two brothers understood, was evidently effective. Zhuo Yang instantly calmed down.

Only then did Qiao Huan take a phone out of his pocket. It was the one Zhuo Yang had given him the night before.

"You picked the wrong people to scam. I started recording a long time ago," Qiao Huan said, looking at the rogue, the corners of his eyes full of disdain. "I caught everything, including your son pushing our Constantine and you scratching Zhuo Yang first."

The rogue's face fell at once.

His carefully built image was ruined anyway. He was betting that this lot had no evidence, so he could make a quick buck.

But when had this guy started recording?

His hands had moved so fast that the rogue hadn't even noticed!

"W-w-we're leaving." Seeing that he couldn't get anything out of this, the rogue pulled his son up and turned to make a run for it.

To his surprise, Qiao Huan grabbed him.

"Don't go. You and your son will have to pay for all the rice plants you crushed while throwing your tantrum," Qiao Huan said coldly. "And you'll have to cover the cost of Constantine's examination too."

"Oh, can you hear the sirens? Yes, I didn't just record you. I also sent a text to the police while I was at it."